Blood and Courage
by Stoplight Delight
Summary: Safely aboard the Defiant after their ordeal on Ajilon Prime, Julian Bashir and Jake Sisko discuss sorrow and the nature of courage, and find ways to heal one another's hearts. Set at the end of 5.04, "...Nor the Battle to the Strong".


"And with your puissant arm renew their feats:  
You are their heir; you sit upon their throne;  
The blood and courage that renowned them  
Runs in your veins…"

— from _Henry V_

 **Blood and Courage**

The fresh dressing felt cool and heavy, its dermaline-infused layers snug and soothing against raw new skin and regenerated muscle, as Nurse Tricia Buhler tucked the loose end and secured it with a magnetic clip.

"Better?" she asked with a gentle smile.

Doctor Julian Bashir nodded earnestly. "Much," he said. He would have been reluctant to admit even this much of his discomfort to his colleagues on the senior staff. Captain Sisko, Jadzia, Miles — all had expressed their concern for him in their own ways, and he'd been touched. But there were things he could trust to his nurse with which he didn't want to burden his friends. The extent of the plasma burns and the slow, excruciating healing process ranked high on that list.

Nurse Buhler was loading a hypospray, glancing up at the biobed monitor set in the Defiant's sleek bulkhead. "Four milligrams metorapan?" she asked.

It was tempting. Julian was three days post-op now, and his arm was healing, but the pain still clawed at him. The traumatized nerve endings, savagely spared by the mortar blast that had eaten away skin, adipose tissue, and muscle, even scorching his tendons, would be hypersensitive for another week, at least. If Doctor Kalandra hadn't operated so promptly and so skillfully, Julian could have expected to be laid up at least that long. As it was, he'd been on his feet eighteen hours after the initial injury. That hadn't really been advisable, but he'd had no choice: the field hospital had been desperately short of physicians, and it would have been a criminal waste for him to languish in a biobed while his skills were needed to save lives. He was paying for the exertions now, though, in pain and almost smothered by fatigue that two fourteen-hour nights of deep sleep and several naps hadn't dispelled.

But he wasn't interested in doping himself back to sleep, not just yet. There was a conversation he wanted to have first, just as important and far less terrifying than the one he'd forced on Captain Sisko yesterday when he really should have been in bed.

"Give me two milligrams," he instructed Nurse Buhler. "It's not so bad today."

She gave him a skeptical look, but she respected his judgement too much to argue. She dialed the dose, and Julian tilted his head to the right so she could apply the hypo to his neck. Pressured straight into his carotid artery, the metorapan reached his brain in nanoseconds. He felt both the slow, searing suffering in his arm and shoulder and the urgency of today's mission fade a little. The medication also brought a wave of hot dizziness, though, and Julian swung his legs up onto the biobed so that he could lie back against it. He didn't have far to go: it was angled up like a chair. He felt Nurse Buhler's hand on his brow.

"All right?" she asked soothingly. "The vertigo'll pass in a moment."

Julian tried to nod, but that only made the medical bay tilt sickeningly to starboard. He pressed his lips together and tried to ride the wave of nausea. He forced himself to focus on the fact that his left arm, moments ago weighed down with pain and bandages, now felt light enough to float away. Metorapan was miraculous stuff, really it was.

Something cool and damp stroked first one cheek, then the other. It brushed across his forehead and then soothed the sides of his throat. Nurse Buhler again, with a cold, sterile cloth in her capable hand.

"It's a good thing you had prompt access to a surgical facility when this happened," she said. "We're not equipped for third-degree plasma burns onboard ship."

"I know," Julian muttered. It was one thing he intended to look into when they got back to Deep Space Nine. The Defiant's medical bay was designed for trauma triage and supportive care, not sophisticated surgery. There wasn't enough space even for the typical Sickbay facilities standard on most small starships. Compared even to science vessels like the Nova or Intrepid Class, the Defiant was tiny. But with tensions running high — not only with the Klingons, but with the Dominion — it seemed prudent to try to expand the range of procedures Julian and his staff could perform on board.

"It's healing beautifully," Nurse Buhler went on, making another pass with the cloth. Julian reached up to intercept it, taking it from her with a hand far steadier than his head, and draped it over his aching eyes. He heard the clack of metal casings as she tidied the instrument tray. "In a few days, you won't be able to tell you were burned. You won't even have a scar."

"Doctor Kalandra does good work," Julian mumbled. Maybe he should have refused the medication entirely. He felt more than halfway stoned right now. And as delicious as the cool cloth felt on his overheated head, the rest of him was cold. A sudden chill shuddered through him, and he was all too aware of his exposed torso. His arm was swathed in the soothing bandages, but he was otherwise naked to the waist, his uniform jumpsuit bunched around his hips. His singlet and his grey shirt were under his head now, where he'd draped them after baring himself for the bandage change.

"Here, just until you're up for getting dressed," said Nurse Buhler gently. She spread a slinky thermal blanket over him, a welcome barrier from the open air. "You're running a fever. Thirty-eight point four degrees: nothing serious, but I'd like to keep an eye on it."

"It's probably because my body's still clearing the toxins from the tissue necrosis," said Julian. He'd spend his night in Intensive Care on both renal dialysis and active hepatic filtration, but there was only so much machines could do — particularly when you could only afford to have a patient connected to them for twelve hours before he had to be back on his feet, and the devices repurposed for a more emergent patient. "You should take fresh samples for a complete hematology workup, too, just to make sure my alanine transaminase levels are still dropping."

She knew all of this, of course, but she was content to listen to him. "Certainly, Doctor," she said respectfully.

Julian smiled. "I'm being obnoxious, aren't I?" he asked.

There was a grin in her voice as she said; "Maybe a little. But frankly, I'm so relieved you're alive that I'm inclined to forgive a little blurring of line between patient and doctor. You could have died from these burns, you know."

Julian did know. He didn't want to think about it. He'd felt like he was dying, those last hundred metres of pushing the generator through the dust, crawling because he lacked the strength to stand. Then when he'd awakened in IC to the news that Jake had not yet returned to the caves, he had wished for death. But death hadn't come, and Jake had returned, physically almost unscathed, and Julian thought he had never seen a more beautiful sight than that of the young man tentatively approaching his bedside. He hadn't known then the wounds Jake bore on his spirit, nor the terrible burden weighing him down more completely with each self-castigating word Julian had spoken while begging his forgiveness.

He freed his right hand from the welcome shelter of the blanket and raked the cloth from his face. Julian blinked away the moisture that beaded his lashes, and met Nurse Buhler's warm eyes.

"Well, I didn't die," he said bracingly. "I've had exceptional care, both down on the planet and in here. And I'm going to make a full recovery. All's well that ends well, right?"

She smiled with some effort. "I suppose," she said. Then she added, confidentially; "I heard you'll be put up for a commendation. Maybe even a medal."

Julian didn't feel comfortable with that, but he wasn't going to dive into that snake-pit of psychological turmoil on the strength of a rumour. "I did what needed to be done, that's all," he demurred. He reached up behind his head and plucked at his shirt. It was still trapped under his metorapan-heavy head, however, and didn't budge. "Can you help me?" he asked.

She complied, cupping a hand behind his head to lift it, and drawing the garments out. She laid them across his lap, and Julian picked up his singlet. Making sense of its orientation and turning it around took more time and considerably more mental energy than it should have done: his cognition was blunted by the medication. He was able to handle it with both hands, though, the fresh bandage hampering him only a little. Julian did not know what merciful deity had spared his fingers when the mortar exploded almost on top of him, but he was grateful. Rehabilitation from plasma burns of the digits would have been measured in weeks for a surgeon, not days.

He slid his left hand into the appropriate armhole, and then inched the garment all the way up his healing arm. Nurse Buhler helped him to clear the shoulder, and then stretched the shirt up over his head so that he could get his right hand into the other side. Julian tensed his abdominal muscles, leaning forward so she could pull the singlet down his back while he did the same in front. Then they repeated the process with the grey turtleneck. It took a little judicious tugging and stretching to get the fabric to lie smoothly over the bandages, but by the time his nurse was closing the fastening at the nape of Julian's neck, he was beginning to feel clothed and professional again.

He had slid over onto one sleeve of his jumpsuit, and had to lift his hip to pull it free. Reaching behind to slide his left arm in was painful even with the metorapan on board, and Julian felt nauseous and breathless by the time his back was covered in the black fabric. He lay back again, then, the front of his jumpsuit gaping well past the waistband of his trunks, and closed his own eyes so he wouldn't have to see the wordless concern in his subordinate's. She drew up the blanket again, covering him to mid-chest. Then he heard her at the instrument tray again.

"I'm going to run that blood sample while you rest right there," she said. "If you insist on going back to your berth instead of staying here where I can keep an eye on you, you're at least going to wait until the medication has settled. Understood?"

"Yes, sir," said Julian, in a feeble attempt at dry wit. He didn't like to admit it even to himself, but he still felt bloody awful. On the surface of Ajilon Prime, he'd had no choice but to overcome his physical limitations. Lives had depended on his competence and his endurance, and he'd saved more than a few on the day after his surgery. During the evacuation, he had been forced to admit to himself that he was in no condition to carry a stretcher or to support one of the walking wounded — not even a child. He had carried a case of crucial supplies instead, and even that, toted over two kilometres of tunnel, had been almost more than he could handle. He still didn't know how he'd found the strength to make that trek a second time, stumbling back alone in search of Jake. He'd had no choice: it was a simple as that. He'd lived with the guilt of leaving the boy to his fate once before, the certainty that he had saved at least three dozen lives by delivering the generator cold comfort indeed. Julian had not been willing to abandon Jake a second time, when the only life at stake was his own.

Then yesterday morning, when he had sought Captain Sisko in the mess hall, Julian had been too wracked with guilt and dread to give any consideration for his physical condition. He had been desperate to apologize for bringing his commanding officer's son into a war zone, convinced that unless he showed himself penitent without delay, there would be no hope of forgiveness. Sisko's response had shocked him: far from the anger and disgust Julian had felt he so richly deserved, the Captain had shown mercy. No, mercy wasn't the right word. He hadn't reacted to Julian's confession and self-castigation with absolution, but with surprise. He hadn't seemed to see what Julian had done wrong, the grave error in judgement he had made in responding to a distress call with an eighteen-year-old civilian in his care. Julian still couldn't quite believe the grace he'd been shown by his captain, probably because he hadn't had much opportunity to reflect upon it: on returning to his berth afterwards, he had promptly fallen into pain-soaked slumber.

Since then, he'd awakened occasionally to hydrate or to relieve himself, but this visit to the medical bay for his self-prescribed bandage change represented one of his two longest period of consciousness since beaming up to the clean, secure, blessedly quiet corridors of the U.S.S. Defiant. The other had been yesterday evening. He had gone to the mess hall yet again, in search of a bland and undemanding meal that his shaken constitution could cope with. He had found the space deserted but for his comrade in battle: Jake Sisko. He'd been working on a PADD, and at the sight of Julian he had leaped to his feet. He'd insisted on being the one to order the food, while Julian rested, but he hadn't stayed to keep him company while he ate. He had left him the PADD instead.

"I… I want you to read this," he'd said, with uncharacteristic uncertainty. He'd looked almost as skittish then as he had in the supply cave on the planet, and no more comfortable in his skin. "Then maybe… when you have… we could talk about it?"

Then he had vanished, leaving a puzzled Julian with his lentil broth and steamed rice, and a piece of introspective writing that upon first glance he had known he didn't want to read where he might be interrupted. It had taken considerable self-control to lay aside the PADD while he ate, but Julian had been glad he did so. Back in the privacy of his spartan little cabin, he had settled at the narrow desk and delved deep into the heart of Jake Sisko, the unseen saga of the boy's time on Ajilon Prime unfolding before his shocked eyes. Julian had seen Jake's turmoil when he returned to the compound, and suspected he was carrying some painful secret. He had not imagined anything half as traumatic as the truth.

In his quarters, without witnesses, Julian almost never read slowly. At the age of eight, he had been socialized out of the habit of speed-reading in public when his mother had caught him at it. She had told him it was rude, and he had believed her. Not until he was fifteen did Julian realize his mother used rude as a euphemism for suspicious, and she had played for years upon his desire to be liked in order to rein in behaviours that might have betrayed the family secret. Regardless, he had always indulged when he was alone, whipping through whole pages in a glance and cutting his study time substantially. On this occasion, though, he had taken his time, poring over every word and absorbing the feelings laid with such raw honesty upon the screen. Jake had bared his soul in that piece, and Julian was still overcome with awe that he had been entrusted to witness it.

He had brought the PADD with him to the medical bay: it was sitting on one of the shelves in the corner. Julian had wanted to seek Jake out promptly upon rising this morning, but by the time he was out of his bunk and dressed, he'd been shaky with pain and conscious of the seeping in the creases of his bandages. So he'd done what a responsible Chief Medical Officer ought to do and sought his nurse's care first. Now that she was almost finished, he could go looking for the young writer so that they could finally talk honestly about what had happened on Ajilon Prime.

"This won't take long," Nurse Buhler assured him, removing the third vacutainer of blood from the extraction device and shaking it in satisfaction. She disappeared around the corner into the tiny lab area at the back of the medical bay. Julian watched her go, wishing belatedly he had asked for a glass of water. There was a replicator in the other treatment room, not fifteen paces from where he sat, but right now it seemed like too much effort to heave himself off the biobed, make the walk, and drag himself back. He was far more exhausted than he ought to be, and the metorapan was only encouraging his woolly-headed indolence.

In fact, as he listened to the far-off melody of chirps and beeps that was the hematology scanner in the next room, Julian found himself drowsing again. It was perfectly normal: persistent fatigue in a burn patient was to be expected, and a sign of healing rather than pathology. But Julian was learning that he had less patience for his own body's needs than he did for any of his patients'. Symptoms he would have been content to tend for days or weeks in another person exasperated him within hours. Some of the thoughts he had so wrathfully directed at his burned and traumatized body during the agonizing journey with the generator faintly horrified him. He had never imagined himself such a pitiless taskmaster, and if he had uttered to a patient even a fraction of the things he had said to himself out there in the dust and the blazing sun, he would have rightly warranted censure by Starfleet Medical. He wasn't feeling half so cruel at the moment, but the impatience was sharp. Or would have been sharp, if he'd had the energy for more than hazy annoyance at his weakness.

He heard the hiss of a door, but it was distant and seemed very much like someone else's problem. He hadn't been officially placed on medical leave: no one had suggested it, and he certainly wasn't about to ask them to take away the much-needed anchor of his work. But neither was he on duty this watch, nor, in truth, in any fit state to practice medicine while the pleasant buzz of the metorapan hummed through his veins. Nurse Buhler was perfectly capable of dealing with most cases she might see on a three-day run through Federation space. If anything cropped up that she could not handle, she could always dose him with the antagonist so that he could step in. In the meantime, Julian drew his left arm across his body, cradling it with the right and feeling the deep, tenderized stretch in his healing triceps. He turned his head to rest his cheek on the firm, geometric pillow, and admired the glister of the lights on the diagnostic screen.

"Doctor… Doctor Bashir?"

The voice was quiet, tentative, and undeniably anxious. It was also very familiar, Julian turned his head ponderously, as if moving through salt water, to look at the lanky figure curled around the bulkhead.

"Jake!" he said warmly, a genuine smile spreading over his face. His tone could not have been more different than the one with which he had uttered the young man's name in the Intensive Care cavern on Ajilon Prime. Then, Julian's breathless relief had overpowered even the thinly-masked anguish of his burns and the slow torment of thirst that the IV feed on his leg hadn't done much to assuage. And Jake had been scraped and harried and much the worse for wear. They hadn't been able to talk long, either, because Kirby had stepped in to tend Jake's facial laceration and to herd him away so that Julian could finally succumb to some desperately-needed sleep, freed of the nightmare certainty that he had brought the younger Mister Sisko to his death.

One thing was the same this time, however. Where Julian was delighted to see the youth, Jake looked uncomfortable and uneasy.

"Are… are you okay?" he asked, still leaning against the lighted arch that divided the medical bay into segments readily sealed in the event of a hull breach or other battle damage.

A blithe fib rose to Julian's lips, but died there. It was ridiculous to try to gloss over his condition, when he was semi-reclined upon a biobed with his uniform open to the pelvic crest and a thermal blanket tucked up to his ninth ribs. Besides, he owed Jake the truth after what they'd been through together — and after the young man's honesty about what he had endured alone.

"I'm convalescing," Julian admitted. "I've just had my dressing changed, and the nurse gave me a dose of pain meds, so I'm a little fuzzy. I'll be all right."

"Dressing?" Jake's eyes travelled to Julian's sleeve. The functional dermaline bandage had a slimmer profile than the one Julian had been fitted with immediately post-op. It scarcely disturbed the line of his jumpsuit sleeve. Julian didn't think any of the patients he'd tended after his conditional discharge from Intensive Care had even realized he was wearing one. "And the meds… you're still in pain?"

Jake looked stricken with guilt. Julian had to exert an effort to smile again.

"That's normal after plasma burns," he explained. "All the damaged tissues have been regenerated, but they're new and they're raw — sort of like the layer of skin you're left with when a blister breaks. And my nerves are misfiring; they'll probably do that for a few more days. But the regeneration series has been a complete success, and I'm told I'll make a full recovery."

Jake didn't look certain about any of this. Half his body was still obscured by the bulkhead, and his visible hand clutched it. He pressed his lips together, dark eyes guarded and very bright.

Julian considered getting up and going to him, but he decided that probably wasn't wise. He was lightheaded from his dose, and if he swayed or faltered as he rose, that would only make the youth feel worse. Instead, he held out his good hand.

"Jake," he said gently. "I'll be fine. I am fine. All things considered, I was very lucky."

For a moment, he didn't think that the young man would respond to his gesture. From his expression, Jake didn't think so, either. But then he caved, and launched himself off the doorpost. He came to the side of the bed, uneasily taking the hand Julian offered. Julian clasped Jake's cold fingers bracingly, and drew him nearer. Because he knew actions were more reassuring than words, he lifted his left hand from his chest and curled it around the back of Jake's hand, too.

"You don't need to worry about me," he said earnestly. "It's just a burned arm. You must have seen me treat dozens of injuries like that down on the surface."

"I did," said Jake. He looked away. "But that's why I know how awful plasma burns are. I don't think I'll ever forget the smell."

"No," Julian admitted. The stench of singed flesh was unforgettable. He'd believed he'd become inured to it through long acquaintance, until he had actually smelled it coming from his own body. He swallowed against sudden queasiness. "I don't think anyone ever does."

Jake looked at him in stark surprise. "I sort of thought you'd lie to me about that," he admitted.

"Did you want me to lie?" Julian asked candidly.

Jake's face contorted for a moment, and he sighed. "No," he said heavily. "No, I think I've done enough lying for both of us."

Julian held Jake's hand tighter, looking up at him with compassion and a level of understanding the young man would probably never appreciate. God, when had Jake gotten so tall? It seemed like only yesterday that he'd been a skinny little fourteen-year-old charging up and down the Promenade with Nog. Now Nog was a cadet at Starfleet Academy, and Jake was a man. And after the events on Ajilon Prime, not only a man in body, Julian suspected.

"I understand why you couldn't explain, Jake," Julian said quietly. "I understand why it felt safer to lie."

Jake's eyes met his in wary surprise. "You… you do?" he asked.

"More than you can possibly know," said Julian.

Jake shook his head, scoffing this off. "My dad says you're one of the most ethical men he's ever served with," he said deprecatingly. "You'd never lie just because you were ashamed of yourself. Heck, you'd never do anything to be ashamed of in the first place."

If only you knew, a jaded, bitter part of Julian's heart muttered from the shadow cast by the unspeakable truth. Julian couldn't shoot down Captain Sisko's words of praise — which warmed him even as his deep-seated loathing of his nature tried to discount them, all the more so because Sisko hadn't only said them, but said them to his son. But he could be honest with Jake about one thing.

"We all do things we're ashamed of," he said gently. "I've been ashamed for days that I brought you to that planet in the first place."

Jake laughed thinly, a mirthless little sound. "Are you kidding?" he said. "I practically had to bully you into answering that distress call, remember? I must've used every manipulation tactic in the book."

Julian found himself smiling. "You did, didn't you?" he teased, testing the waters. "'I'm eighteen!', indeed."

Jake's chuckle had a little more substance this time. "I guess I sounded like an idiot, didn't I?" he said.

"No." Julian shook his head earnestly. "Actually, you reminded me of myself at your age. I was a bit of a daredevil, carried away with dreams of heroism and adventure. That's what brought me to Starfleet Academy in the first place."

Jake's expression darkened. He tried to pull back from Julian's hands, but he didn't let him. Jake cast his eyes away instead. "I'll bet you never left a man to die in a firefight," he muttered.

Julian was about to speak, not quite certain what to say but convinced silence would only prove corrosive, when he was cut off by the clack of uniform boots on the deck plates, and Nurse Buhler came around the corner from the lab area. She was carrying a PADD with the twin-serpent caduceus stencilled in white on the back, reading it as she went.

"Your serum ALT is six times normal, Doctor, and your GGT is— oh, Mister Sisko! Lovely to see you," she said, surprised but pleased when she noticed Julian was not alone. "Stopped by for a visit?"

"Actually, I thought Doctor Bashir might be on duty," Jake said awkwardly. He pulled back his hand again, and this time Julian let it go. He remembered what it was like to be eighteen, caught between childhood and the adult world, and suspected that even if he weren't in such turmoil Jake wouldn't want an attractive young person to see him holding hands with one of his father's senior officers. It wasn't childish to need the reassurance of touch, but sometimes it felt that way to a teen. "The computer told me he was here, and…"

"Actually, if you don't mind, Tricia," Julian said; "Jake and I could use some privacy. We have a lot to talk about. If you wanted to go and grab some coffee in the mess hall or something, I'll call you if anything crops up here."

Nurse Buhler looked like she might argue, but she did a quick head-to-toe visual pass, and seemed to decide that her patient was fit enough to mind the store and work a combadge. And he was still her superior officer, and technically on the active duty roster. She yielded.

"All right," she said gently. "But I do want you to call me, yeah? No going solo. We're not critically short-staffed up here, and you've got no excuse to be a cowboy." She took two steps closer to the bed, and handed Julian the PADD. "Your test results," she said. "I ran a whole panel."

Julian nodded. "Thanks," he said. He pointed to the shelf where Jake's PADD lay face-down. It was one of the much smaller, ultra-portable palm models, clearly not medical issue. He hoped Nurse Buhler wouldn't remark on that. "Could you pass me that one, too?"

"You bet," she said warmly, fetching the device and handing it off without a question or a second glance. "I'll come back in an hour?"

"Sounds good," Julian agreed. He tracked her with his eyes as she left the room, and listened for the whoosh of the door as she departed the medical bay entirely.

Jake didn't watch her go. He was staring down at the rippled silver folds of the thermal blanket.

"What's serum ALT?" he asked.

"It's an enzyme," said Julian absentmindedly, thumbing through the list of test results. He dared to take them in at speed, counting on Jake assuming he'd just skimmed instead of absorbing every number. "It's a marker for liver function."

The sequelae of his traumatic injury were still obvious in his bloodwork, but all of his numbers had improved since yesterday. Satisfied, he rolled onto his left hip so that he could reach the instrument tray without contorting his healing shoulder. He laid the PADD across the tools, and flopped back into the bed. Jake was watching him anxiously.

"And if it's high… that means your liver's damaged?" he asked. "Six times normal, that's…"

"It's to be expected," Julian reassured him. "Six times normal isn't actually as high as it sounds. When I was in intensive care, we were pushing eleven."

Jake grimaced, and Julian knew he'd said the wrong thing. Nurse Buhler had recognized the number for the good news it was, but to a layperson, it sounded alarming.

"Oh, Jake…" Julian murmured. He reached and plucked at the boy's sleeve. "How long are you going to torment yourself over this?"

Anguished eyes swivelled to his face. Jake didn't seem able to try to pull away this time. His shoulders were sagging, and his arms were limp in his lap.

"I left you to die," he said, the words a strangled wheeze. He nodded down at the smaller PADD, still on Julian's lap. "That's why I wanted you to read that. I wanted you to understand what I did. You called me a hero, Doctor Bashir… but I'm not."

Julian wanted to repeat the young man's name again, infusing it with all the compassion that was swelling his heart and choking his throat, but he thought that might prove their mutual undoing. Instead, he nodded at the stool wheeled into the corner by the library terminal.

"Why don't you pull up a seat, and we can talk about this," he said. "I'm not used to you towering over me like this. It's unsettling."

A thin, panicked little laugh passed Jake's lips. "I get that a lot," he said, reaching with one long arm to snag the stool. He drew it up near the head of the bed and perched on it uncertainly, still looking like he might bolt if startled. He fumbled with his hands before knotting them over one knee.

Julian picked up the PADD.

"You should know I'm honoured you showed me this," he said earnestly. "It's an exceptional piece of writing, but what I appreciate most is your honesty and your self-reflection. I knew there was something you were keeping to yourself, Jake. Something that was weighing on your heart. What I didn't know was how painful the truth was."

Jake hung his head, shrinking further in on himself. "I don't have any excuse," he said. "I was scared, that's all. Both times, I was scared witless, and just acted out of instinct."

All I could think about was doing whatever it took to stay alive. Once that meant running away, and once it meant picking up a phaser. The words were seared into Julian's mind, one of the most starkly drawn portrayals of instinct under fire that he had ever read.

"I know," Julian said softly. "But do you understand we can't be held accountable for our instincts? Jake? Look at me."

Jake acceded to the supplication, but only for an instant. Then he went right back to staring at his knee. "How can you be so understanding, when I left you to die?"

"I left you to die, too, Jake," Julian said, fighting his own remorse to keep his voice level and rational. "Or I thought I was. I didn't know you'd cleared the battlefield: I thought you were out there, behind a rock or under a bramble bush or in a crater somewhere, burned or maimed or bleeding to death. When I couldn't see you immediately, I made a choice to abandon you. I know exactly what you're feeling, the guilt and the self-hatred and the shame, because I'm feeling every one of those things, too. Anything could have happened to you out there, and I didn't search for you. Not properly. Maybe if I had, you would have been spared your nightmare in that trench."

"That's different," Jake spat. "I ran away because I was terrified. You made a choice not to search for one person when there were dozens dependant on getting that generator. I was thinking about myself. You saved all those lives."

Julian could see the narrative Jake had crafted for himself, one that hadn't been laid out explicitly in his writing, but was etched all over his body and his face. Jake was looking at this in lines of perfect black and white: he was a coward, Julian was a hero. But it wasn't as simple as that, not by a long shot.

"You can't hold yourself to my standard of behaviour," said Julian. "I'm fifteen years older than you are. I'm a Starfleet officer and you're a civilian. This wasn't my first time in battle. I've taken oaths, Jake, oaths to defend the innocent and to save lives, whatever the personal cost. In a moment like that, when you're floundering without anything to hold onto, an oath can give you an anchor you might not otherwise have."

Jake dared to look at him again. "Is that why you did it?" he asked. "Your oath as a doctor?"

"Partly, yes," said Julian. He couldn't explain the other impelling force: the reason he felt the need to drive himself always, always, to do the right thing and to put the needs of others above his own. It wasn't just professional ethics or a personal code. It was a deep, pernicious terror that if he ever failed that test, if he ever let a real human life flicker out of existence because he was trying to keep himself alive instead, he would become what he had always feared he might truly be. He couldn't face that prospect, and so which one of them was really the coward? Not Jake Sisko, that's for damned sure.

Julian took a deep breath that was not as steady as he would have liked. "But that's not all," he said, forcing himself on to the next argument. "You've been in battle now, Jake, so you understand. When you're under fire, you don't really think. You don't weigh each decision and its ramifications. You just react. Out there in that gully, that's just what we did: we both reacted. You ran in one direction, out into No Man's Land. I ran in the other."

"To the runabout," Jake argued. "To the generator. To save lives."

"Every life I saved that day would have been lost the next night," said Julian; "if you hadn't held back the Klingons by sealing that passage. And they wouldn't have died in bed, under palliative pain management and the care of Doctor Kalandra and her people. They would have been mowed down in a spread of disruptor fire, or worse. If you're going to fixate on the lives saved by the generator, Jake, you've got to be fair about this. Remember that you saved them, too."

Jake shook his head with hypnotic slowness, his lips working but no sound coming out. Finally, he tore his eyes from Julian's and huddled over his lap again, one long arm hugging his abdomen as he rocked against it.

"I always thought I'd be better," he said, almost inaudibly. "Braver. 'I'm a Sisko,' I said, and I meant it."

Julian cupped a hand over Jake's shoulder, wishing he could enfold the boy in an embrace that could drive away these demons. "Jake, your father sets a standard of courage that's hard for anyone to meet," he soothed. "But I promise you, in battle, he's just as frightened as anyone else. He's learned how to control it, how to channel it, but no one ever stops feeling it, not as long as they have something to lose."

"It's not just my dad!" Jake's voice broke, and the tears he'd been fighting almost since walking into the room finally spilled down his cheeks. "I know he's a Starfleet officer, and he's fought for the Federation since before I was born. I know I can't expect to be like him, not my first time in battle. Like you said, I'm just a civilian. But… but my mom was a civilian, too, and she wasn't a coward!"

Julian's lips parted in astonishment, his stunned moment of numbness immediately giving way to a cascade of startled thoughts moving at high warp. He had never given much thought to Jake's mother, except when familiarizing himself with the crew's medical files during his first weeks on Deep Space Nine. Of course, Julian had been aware of Jennifer Sisko's death during the Battle of Wolf 359, but on the few occasions when he had paused to remember, it had always been in the context of how the loss impacted Captain Sisko. Julian had considered the struggles of a widowed father trying to raise a child on a remote outpost; or he'd looked at Sisko's budding romance with Captain Kasidy Yates, and seen in that a sign of healing and emotional health; or he'd read the reports about Jennifer's counterpart in the alternate universe, and wondered how the Captain could possibly have coped with such a situation. But he'd never really looked at Jake from that angle.

And of course his mother's death had shaped Jake's life. Of course it haunted his heart. He had lost her at eleven, almost half his young lifetime ago. Julian's relationship with his own mother was strained and tempestuous, and even he would be left with a gaping hole in his life if she died tomorrow. Such a loss at such a young age was almost unthinkable.

All of this passed through Julian's mind in the time it took Jake to suck in a painful breath so that he could press on.

"When the captain called Battle Stations, I was in the classroom with all the other kids," Jake said. "She came and got me. I don't think she was supposed to, but she did. People were running in the corridors, and shouting, grabbing phasers from the weapons lockers. And Mom was so calm. She just took my hand, and she brought me back to our quarters, and she closed the door — shut out all the noise and the panic. A-and we sat down on the couch…"

Julian said nothing. He knew Jake didn't need him to speak, not now. What he needed was someone to listen to him.

"She told me a story," Jake moaned. "The Borg were outside — we could see the battle through the windows. Ships were exploding, and the phasers, and that cube… and she just kept rocking me and telling me a story. Anansi and the leopard. E-even when the lights went out, she got me down on the floor and under the table almost like it was a game. She was so calm. I could feel her heart racing, but she was so calm!"

The Borg attack on Sector 001 had taken place during Julian's second year at Starfleet Medical Academy. He had been spared the front lines because he'd been in the middle of a classroom semester instead of an internship placement. But he and every other cadet in his program had been mobilized to man the field hospitals erected in schools, auditoriums, and athletic facilities across the planet. During the state of emergency while the Borg lurked in Earth orbit, Julian had waited, like everyone else, for the end.

The crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise neutralized the threat, and destroyed the Borg ship. But just as the rest of the personnel on the ground had been given their orders to stand down, and the cadets from the Academy proper were mustered back to San Francisco, the survivors from the Wolf System had started to pour in to the extemporaneous medical facilities. Like everyone else in the field hospital in São Paulo, Julian had spent four near-sleepless days triaging and treating the wounded, Starfleet and civilian alike. It had been a trial by fire, and not all of his classmates had proved equal to the task.

Thirty-nine ships had been lost in the battle of Wolf 359. Casualties had been estimated in the area of eleven thousand, and to this day no one knew how many had been killed, and how many captured and assimilated. Jennifer Sisko, at least, had been declared dead — albeit by a security officer using a tricorder instead of by a qualified medical professional — before the Saratoga was abandoned, and the vessel itself was seen to be destroyed seconds after the last successful jettison of an escape pod. Captain Sisko and Jake were spared that horror of uncertainty, and Julian was sure there was some comfort in that.

"She'd be ashamed of me," Jake whispered, shattered. "She'd be so ashamed."

"No," said Julian, forcing absolute conviction into his words. "No. Jake, you need to hear this. Look at me. Jake, look at me."

Jake turned his head spastically away. Julian did the only thing he could think of. He hitched himself over onto hip and shoulder, and stretched his left arm farther than he'd stretched it even during this morning's range-of-motion evaluation so that the could hook his index finger under Jake's chin, guiding his head up and back to centre so their eyes could meet. The position was awkward, and without the metorapan onboard, it would have been remarkably painful. But it worked. Jake's tormented eyes met Julian's, tears still spilling over his lower lashes and trickling into the crease of his nose.

"Your mother could never be ashamed of you," Julian said, quietly but with unshakable certainty. "She'd be so proud. Proud of you for pushing to respond to that distress signal. Proud of the good work you did in the hospital. Proud of you for venturing out with me to go after the generator. Proud of you for staying at than man's side to give him human contact and comfort while he was dying. Proud of you for what you did during the evacuation. And so very, very proud of you for everything you've learned from this experience, and from the insight you've so unflinchingly put into words. That's the real act of courage, Jake: not what you do in a split-second life-or-death decision, but the way you rise up to live with yourself afterwards."

Jake tried to shake his head, but it only jiggled tightly against Julian's hand. "You don't know that," he said, in a fragile voice. He looked so desperate to believe what he had just heard, but he didn't quite dare to.

Julian knew that feeling all too well.

"You don't know what she'd think," Jake repeated. "You didn't even meet her. You can't know."

"I know," said Julian, not so forcefully this time. Instead, his voice was quiet, but still resolute. "I know your father, and I know the kind of woman he would love. And I know you, Jake. I can see the son your parents raised together. I don't doubt your mother's courage, because I can see it in you. And I don't doubt her compassion and wisdom, either, because you've got your share of those, too. She'd understand. She would hate that you had to go through an ordeal like this, the same as your father hates it, the same as I hate it. But she'd be so proud of who you are, and how you've grown."

Jake's next breath was almost a hiccup. He pulled back just far enough to get his chin off of Julian's hand, and wiped at his eyes. "You think so?"

Julian stretched a little further so that he could curl his palm around Jake's right shoulder. Now he was holding him with both hands, looking straight into his pained eyes. "I know so," he promised.

Jake glanced down at the doctor's arm, and slid his foot off the base of the stool. Julian was afraid he was about to push back, but he dragged himself forward instead, pulling in closer to the bed so that Julian didn't have to strain quite so far to reach him.

"I want to believe that," Jake murmured. His eyes travelled to the PADD. "I didn't really think of her while I was writing. I should have, but I didn't. Still, I think… I think she was in my heart, you know? Even though I wasn't consciously remembering?"

"Of course she was," said Julian. He thought maybe he could let go without seeming to withdraw out of unease or disengagement. He brought his left arm back to the support of his flank, and let the right hand travel from Jake's shoulder down to his elbow. With his left index finger, he pointed to the wheeled cart next to the biobed. "There are handkerchiefs in the top drawer, if you need one," he said.

Jake's responding laugh was thin and shaky, but sincere. "Guess I'm dripping, huh?" he said.

Julian smiled. "Maybe a little."

Jake twisted to reach with his right arm so that he didn't disturb Julian's lingering hold on his left. He dug out one of the soft squares and blotted at his eyes before blowing his nose. Then he looked at the crumpled cloth, and sighed.

"I'm sorry about this," he said. "I just came to ask if you'd read my piece, not to get all…" He gestured inarticulately with a hand still cupped around the handkerchief.

"I'm glad you did," said Julian earnestly. "You can't carry this sort of thing bottled up inside of you. These kinds of hurts, these kinds of feelings, they have a way of eating a person alive."

"Feelings about my mom?" asked Jake, looking genuinely perplexed.

"Feelings of self-hatred," said Julian.

And didn't that just make him the biggest hypocrite in the Quadrant? He'd been bottling up all that and more since he was younger than Jake, without hope of relief or release. Julian still hadn't faced the awful knowledge that he'd brought his young companion out of the shelter of the cave in the first place under false pretences. The realization had come to him while he lay staring at the ceiling of the cave in Intensive Care, one more torment to pile on top of all the others. When Julian had asked Jake to accompany him to fetch the generator, it had been under the assumption that carrying it would be a two-person job. And that hadn't proved to be the case, had it? If he had been honest with himself — never mind anyone else — Julian might have realized beforehand that he wouldn't require help to carry out the mission. And Jake might have been spared all this anguish.

Julian didn't yet know how he was going to live with that. The same way he lived with all the rest of it, he supposed: by burying it as deeply as he could, by throwing himself back into his work, and by trying to prove to himself through his efforts to do good in the Galaxy that he was in some small way worthy of existing within it.

"I don't hate myself," Jake said softly. "At least, I don't want to hate myself. The fact that you don't hate me, that you don't even blame me… that helps, Doctor Bashir. Thank you."

"I'm glad," said Julian softly. But that really wasn't adequate. "Jake, you're welcome to call me Julian if you'd like," he added. "You're not a kid anymore, and you and I have been through the kind of experience that forges true friendships."

As soon as those words were out, he felt a little self-conscious — not at the suggestion of greater familiarity, which Jake had certainly earned, but at the implication that they were now friends. Julian didn't want to presume. His years on Deep Space Nine had broken a lifelong pattern of isolation and social rejection, and for the first time in his life he was surrounded not only with genial colleagues and amiable acquaintances but with true, trusted friends. But a part of Julian would always be the awkward boy, too clever for his own good, standing on the outside looking in, and beating his wings against the invisible walls of other people's easy social graces like a moth trying to reach a glassed-in flame.

Julian would be eternally grateful to those — Jadzia, and Miles, and Nerys, and the others — who had let him into their lives before he had broken his wings and given up the effort of trying, again and again. If not for a certainty that if he didn't risk the heartbreak of rejection, even over and over again, his heart would break from loneliness anyway, he might never have kept on through his stilted adolescence and his Academy years - when no one had shown any patience for his ineptitude, or tolerated his gaffs and fumbles long enough to get to know him. When he was able to bury the cancerous insecurity that lurked, even today, at the core of every one of his precious friendships, Julian rejoiced in what he had found and built on Deep Space Nine.

But reaching out was always a risk, and over the course of his lifetime such overtures had been met with rejection more often than acceptance. Making one to Jake now, uncertain how he would respond, awoke all of Julian's old anxieties afresh.

Jake smiled lopsidedly. "I don't know if I'm quite ready to do that, Doctor Bashir," he said abashedly, tossing the handkerchief into the little wire bin meant for the cleaning reprocessor so that he could chafe the back of his neck with his palm. "But I really would like us to be friends, if that's okay with you. We get on pretty well, don't we? And we both talk a lot."

Julian knew he was grinning from ear to ear, but he couldn't help it. He thought back to the afternoon when they'd received the Ajilon distress call. He'd been babbling on at Jake, swept away in his enthusiasm for his prion replication research and the novelty of having a willing and captive audience. Had he bored his young companion? He hadn't considered it then, and he didn't quite have the courage to ask now.

There was that word again: the theme of all their interactions this past week, even when Julian hadn't been aware of it.

"I suppose we do, at that," he said, finally feeling the time had come to let go of Jake's elbow. He made use of his liberated hand to adjust the biobed pillow. "When we get back to the station, we should try to spend some time together under less trying circumstances. I hear you're quite the dom-jot player?"

Jake's face lit up into the first playful expression Julian had seen from him since they had strode into the chaos of triage together. "You play?" he asked, almost impishly.

Julian hadn't heard Jake was a player so much as a hustler, and he grinned. "No," he allowed; "but I've always wanted to learn."

"Oh, well, I'm a great teacher," said Jake, preening a little. Then his face grew solemn again and he reached for the PADD, fingers stopping about a decimetre short. "Are you… um… done with that? I don't know if I'm ready to have copies floating around out there."

"I understand completely," Julian assured him. It was a similar concern that had first led him to journal in longhand when he was about Jake's age. Some thoughts were too personal to put out into the ether. "Do you know what you're going to do with it, yet?"

"Not really," Jake admitted, plucking up the pad and tucking it against himself. "It's not exactly the article the journal's expecting. I sort of want to show it to my dad, but I'm nervous. He doesn't know… everything. Not yet. I thought… I thought you deserved to be the first person to see it."

Julian didn't know quite what to say to that. "I'm honoured, Jake. Truly," he murmured. A little more bracingly, he added; "And you should show it to him. He'll understand. And he'll be proud."

Jake's eyes flickered over Julian's face, looking for any hint of a platitude. Then he bobbed his head. "I will," he said. "But I think I'll wait 'til we're home." He paused and then added with a hint of irony; "It'll give me one last chance to check the spelling."

"Sounds good," said Julian.

Jake looked thoughtful for a moment, then troubled. "I wish I knew his name," he said at last. "The man who got his platoon to safety. I was in that ravine with him all the time he was dying, and I never asked his name."

That was something Julian could help with. "Burke," he said. "Chief Petty Officer Ira Burke." At Jake's surprised look, he shrugged deprecatingly. "I checked the dispatches after I read your piece. He saved eighty-seven people. After the ceasefire, they recovered his body eight kilometres from where you and I set down. He's going to be awarded the Christopher Pike Medal of Valor, posthumously."

Jake closed his eyes, committing the name to memory alongside the face Julian knew he would never forget. "Ira Burke," he said. Then he looked at Julian. "The Christopher Pike Medal… that's a big deal, isn't it?"

Julian nodded. "It's one of Starfleet's highest citations for courage and leadership," he said. "It's usually reserved for command-level officers, but exceptions can be made in the case of acts of heroic personal sacrifice."

Jake looked away. "I wish he'd had better company while he died," he muttered.

Julian remembered that part of the piece with aching clarity. The things Burke had said to Jake were the kind of barbs a person could carry in their heart their whole life. For all his surgical skill, they were beyond Julian's power to extract, but at least he could offer some small degree of palliation.

"Dying brings out the rawest emotions in all of us, Jake," he said. "The things Chief Burke said to you… they weren't fair. They weren't even really true. They were just the things he had to say to make his own last moments easier to bear. They weren't meant for you. When you find them gnawing at you, try to remember that, okay?"

Jake sucked in a shuddering breath and met Julian's eyes. "Okay," he huffed. "I'll try."

"That's all I can ask," said Julian. A spidery itch ran up his left arm, the trail of a trickling rivulet of dermaline gel. He shifted, intending to scratch at it, and restrained himself. Jake didn't need any further reminders of his wounds. "The other thing I need you to remember is that I meant what I said when we found you in the cave. You are a hero, Jake. You saved just as many lives as Burke did. As many as I did. Nothing you were thinking or feeling changes that."

Jake sighed. "I don't feel like a hero," he muttered.

"Yes, well," Julian sighed, rolling squarely onto his back again and staring up at the stark rafters of the utilitarian ceiling; "neither do I."

"But the generator!" Jake protested. "All those people! Everyone who needed a respirator, or dialysis, or a stasis field, or a — oh. Oh." He chuckled tiredly. "Yeah, all right. I get it."

"Good," Julian said stoutly. He pushed the thermal blanket down to mid-thigh, and sat up straight for the first time since the metorapan took hold. He looked down his front, and closed his jumpsuit deftly. Then he gathered up the blanket and began to fold it.

"Here, let me," said Jake, rising from the stool. Making good use of his long arms, he reduced the blanket to a small, compact square. As Julian swung his legs off the bed, Jake offered him an arm to grab as he hopped down. Julian swayed a little, rocked by a wave of metorapan giddiness, and then stood tall. Even then, Jake had a good eight or nine centimetres on him.

Julian grinned. "When did you get so tall?" he asked.

Jake shrugged. "My grandfather says I'm a bean pole," he said. "I'm guessing you've heard the same thing yourself."

"I'll never tell," Julian said slyly. In early adolescence, he'd been embarrassed by his skinny body. After the age of fifteen, his slender lankiness had made him feel safer than almost anything else in his life. Stereotypes, especially visual ones, were powerful. Deviating from them was one of the best protections he could have hoped for.

"Do you want to get lunch together?" Jake asked with a moment's hesitation that told Julian he wasn't the only one self-conscious about dubbing a new friendship.

"I'd love to," said Julian, leading the way to the door.

Jake hung back, looking around. "Do we need to wait 'til the nurse gets back?" he asked.

On Deep Space Nine, the Infirmary was never left unstaffed. On the Defiant, however, where the crew compliment was rarely over fifty and no one was ever more than three decks or six sections from any part of the ship, it really wasn't necessary.

"She's probably in the mess hall herself," said Julian. "We can let her know."

Jake shrugged affably. "Whatever you say: you're the Chief Medical Officer."

"And don't you forget it," Julian said stoutly.

As he fell into step beside the older man (and wasn't that a strange way to think of himself?), Jake regarded Julian quizzically. "Hey, Doctor? Have you really never played dom-jot?"

Julian grinned. "Never, not once," he said.

Jake rubbed his hands together with glee. "Ooh, this'll be fun!" he enthused.

(fade to black)

* * *

 _Note: For a deeper exploration of the snake-pit Julian avoids here, but cannot escape in the desolation of Dominion Interment Camp 371 not three months later, please see "In Restless Dreams", Chapter 31 of the ongoing epic, "The Viewless Winds"._


End file.
